Morality without god

Often one hears from the religious side that one cannot have morals without god or holy scriptures, and they seem to be baffled how you just dont run around killing people torturing them and whatnot.Morality is a part of us a part is imbeaded in our genes, a pack of wolves does not eat and kill each other because its counter-productive to their society.And a part of it is learned from our social interactions when we are children and it evolves as we grow up. If we where to grow up in ancient Rome we would find it perfectly socaly acceptable that people are killing each other in an arena for our enjoyment, or if we grew up in an ancient Israel tribe we would find it perfectly acceptable to beat a slave to an inch of his life, our behaviour in that instance would also be religiously and morally idealised, as we where adhering to the rules of our religion. Because we would grow up with that kind of behaviour all around us. Nowadays we find that kind of behavior wrong because our culture evolved. We have decided that slavery is wrong, that hurting people is wrong, that killing is wrong, and we did it without any god telling us too, no we did it in spite all manor of religions told us the exact opposite. Only a few centuries ago the Christian religious doctrine was that the only way a black man can get in to heaven is as a slave.But what i believe most religious people who claim that one cant have morality without god really mean is that we do not have anything to strive fore in a moralistic view, why should someone strive to do better to be nicer to help others if there is no reward waiting for us at the end of our toils.I believe one needs no reward to to good to be good to strive to better ones self, if as a society we accept that we are all better off if we all try to do better. We are better off if some of us dont act greedy and hoard money and possessions for the sake that they have more money and possessions then you, sure we all have desires to have stuff but most uf us would be happy with a million in a bank account, we would still work and gain income but we would not be hoarding millions uppon millions of dollars having so much that we would not know what to spend it on how many private islands does one need anyway. how many cars ... We are all better off if we adheare to the rules and laws we make and if these rules and laws adheare to the opinions of the majority of what they should be nowdays the lawmakers are just inventing crimes and making it easier for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.What we should strive for as a society is to better ourselves in every way also intellectually nowadays in the views of the majority if one strives to learn say 10 languages, or understand some topics like say quantum physics are viewed as strange behaviour its better to have a drink take a nap on the couch and go to church on Sundays because that is what god wants from you he hates when you doubt his perfect book with its perfect explanations.Or reward for doing good and being moral would be a better world now, not a fictional world after we die.While i do believe that religion played a mayor part in to making humanity what it is now it was needed when humanity was still young it was the first way to construct a basic guideline on how to behave in a society but nowadays religion is counter-productive we can do much better then the framework of religious morality allows. Just take a look at the middle east their freedoms hampered because of a 1400 year old book about a magic man in the sky, people stoned beheaded, killed bombed because they do not behave exactly as their book prescribes.

Thread copied here from the Morality without god thread in the Proposed New Topics forum.

One question I've been itching to ask these religious people who think that you can't be moral without God, and that mere human laws and customs are insufficient to constrain us ...Well, I'd like to ask them this.When was the last time you committed a sin? Lust, anger, pride, covetousness ... right, within the last half hour, wasn't it?And yet you believe that your actions, even your inner thoughts, are watched over by a judgmental God who damns sinners to Hell.Now, tell me this. When did you last commit a felony?The fear of a merely human police force does in fact constrain your actions far more than your stated belief in the inexorable vengeance of a wrathful God. So why can you not believe that the same is true of me?Now, this is aside from the fact that I do have a sense of right and wrong. But the people who say we need God to make us moral phrase this belief in terms of expected punishment and reward. Then again I would like to ask them --- which punishments really keep them in line: the inexorable judgments of a supposedly omniscient God, or the relatively ineffectual actions of the police?

Not true. I believe that through prayer, I am in communion with the Spirit of God and that my inner thoughts fall in line accordingly. The reason that I strive to be obedient is because I want to be responsible for my inner thoughts, submitting them to the discipline of logic, reason, and reality. We may well all sin and fall short on a daily or even hourly basis, but this is no excuse for failure, never mind autocratic fundamentalist thinking. Neither,though the latter is more likely. We as a species should strive for perfection or at least doing and/or behaving our best. Perhaps you believe that you don't need God for this, and I believe I do, but we are in agreement otherwise.

I have to agree with that Phat. It is neither the god nor the police that keep me in line but rather my own conscience.It seems obvious to me that god, religion and the police are products of a hard wired moral sense. We would have no gods if we didn't have the morals first.

I for one am very great full for the Bible telling us how to treat gay men.Leviticus 20:13Glory!

Personally, I don't believe that we could even breath without God,but even people who don't believe in God have no excuse for doing wrong to themselves or others.

I would go even further to make the point.
I think it is better to be good for no reward than to be good for a reward.
In fact, it's not a difficult argument to say that being good "for a reward" isn't really being good in the first place. It's simply making a trade or deal. There is no honour in such a way.

Nice try, undercover police officer. I think you're underestimating the impact that their beliefs have on themselves. Some of these people are quite crazy.

All action is selfish. The 'better' becomes the reward.Empathy and compassion are merely tools that are ultimately intended to deliver some reward to the bearer of those qualities. There is no such thing as good or bad without reference to the self.

I'll admit that it could be.
But I do not see how you can show that it necessarily must be without reading someone else's mind to see their motivation.Do you think it's impossible for someone to do something that another person describe's as "doing something nice just because it's nice?"
If such a thing can happen, then it's possible that the one doing the action in the first place isn't doing the action in order to "be better" or for any kind of reward. It's just other people describing it that way.Just because something can be described as selfish if you ascribe a certain motivation to it... doesn't mean that this was the motivation that actually caused the action in the first place. In the instinctual sense, yes. The same way that fear is a tool that is ultimately intended to force a "fight or flight" response.
However, we can use our intelligence to override our instincts.
We can understand and work around our fear so that we do not "fight or flight" but do something else instead.
We can also understand empathy and compassion such that we do not allow ourselves to be driven directly from them.Or, at least I can Agreed. Or... agreed in the absolute, ultimate sense anyway... which is what I think you're talking about here.Edited by Stile, : Forgetting words is fun and!

No. I'm not going to visit my dying grandma tonight for any reason that benefits me at all. I'm doing it for her.

I think that if the person committing the act recognizes it as a 'nice' action then they are ultimately motivated by some reward. It is a little off to describe it as selfish but in the final analysis I think that is what it is. But selfishness is not a bad thing and in fact it seems to be essential for life to persist.I think that we are just lucky that cooperation and kindness have been selected as being beneficial to our survival. If it were more beneficial to kill all competition then our moral sense would reflect that. Indeed I think that it does reflect that in many cases such as war and starvation.

How would you feel if you didn't spend any time with her?

Better. I don't like seeing her like this and I wouldn't feel bad for not seeing her.